1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to processing of invoices for payment. More particularly, it relates to identifying and taking action on duplicate invoices prior to payment.
2. Background Art
Currently, electronic payment, or enterprise resource planning (ERP), systems have some sort of duplicate check which are limited in scope to a single, native system and to check criteria. There are also companies that specialize in running similar programs and collecting duplicate payments made. There is a need in the art for an improved system and method for comparing activity from multiple systems to identify duplicate invoices prior to payment. This improved system should initiate the detection of duplicate invoices before payment and thus avoid considerable expense. Typically there are four successively more expensive alternative outcomes of a duplicate payment after the check has been sent. They are: (1) the check can be returned with a subsequent administrative cost in voiding the transaction; (2) the check can be retained and cashed and a more expensive collection process invoked based on discovery later via an in-house post payment system; (3) an outside audit firm can discover the duplicate invoice which incurs the preceding expense plus a finders fee to the firm; and (4) the duplicate payment can be lost in its entirety.
In some, particularly large, enterprises, multiple accounts payable (A/P) systems may be consolidated at a headquarters level. As a result, the purchasing function of the enterprise may purchase goods on different systems from the same vendor. Therefore it is possible, and occasionally occurs, that the same invoice is submitted for payment to more than one system. There is a need in the art to detect such duplicate invoices.
It is an object of the invention to provide and improved method and system for identifying duplicate invoices prior to payment.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for identifying prior to payment duplicate invoices from activity on multiple systems.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method periodically executing a plurality of coordinated logic processes comparing current activity against historical activity from a plurality of systems for identifying duplicate invoices prior to payment.